DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Kasey Kahne has come so close to winning a NASCAR Nextel Cup race in his rookie season that most people regard it as a foregone conclusion.

With 18 laps left in the last Southern 500, it looked like he had a shot at fulfilling that promise.

Kahne and fellow Dodge mate Jamie McMurray elected to stay out on the night's final caution, which came out with 23 laps to go, hoping to hold off the leaders who elected to take tires.

Kahne had pitted on Lap 331 and had just six laps at speed on those tires.

"Tommy made the decision [to stay out] just for track position," Kahne said. "We had been fighting back all day. I'd run into the wall too many times, and he just wanted to stay out and get some track position, see if we could hold those guys off. It ended up paying off.



"We got a top-five out of something we probably wouldn't have no matter what if we hadn't done that. I think if we had come in for tires we'd have been sixth, seventh, eighth, somewhere in there."

The older tires proved not to be the answer. He finished fifth for the third straight race and earned his 13th top-five this season.

"We used to be good at seconds {second-place finishes]," Kahne quipped. "Now it looks like we're good at fifths.

"Someday maybe we'll be good at firsts. A top-five finish is pretty good finish for what we worked with all day. I ran into the wall 15 times and these guys just kept pulling the fenders out."

After falling to the rear of the field for the start after crashing his car in Happy Hour on Saturday, Kahne fought hard for every position despite a loose race car.

For a stretch of the race, Kahne was more into the wall than alongside it. He touched the wall early, earning a Darlington stripe on the right side of his Dodge, and smacked into it a number of times over the course of the 367 laps.

Earning a Darlington stripe is one of the rites of passage in NASCAR racing, but Kahne wasn't all that impressed.

"I don't know if that's an accomplishment, but we finished in the top five with a pretty torn-up race car," Kahne chuckled. "It's so easy to get in that wall, and once you do, you do it again. I did it like five times today, and that's just way too many times."

Despite the frequent wall-banging, Kahne was in a position to win when the race came down to the end.

"Our car was really, really loose all day and night," Kahne said. "We just stayed out to get track position. If everybody came down we were going to stay out and if nobody did, we were going to pit and get tires and try to pass some cars that way. The cars on new tires were definitely better, and we got a top five where maybe we should have gotten a top 10."

Kahne agreed with Baldwin's call.

"I agree with whatever Tommy says," Kahne said. "Sometimes if I don't agree, I'll mention something, but more times than not he makes great calls and it seems like we always get the car better when he's working on it. It's good we finished in the top five with a torn-up race car."

Given the unique situation for this last Southern 500, the race started in bright sunshine and finished under the lights, visibility was a big factor, especially when the sun sat low over Turn 3.

Jeff Gordon, who finished third, came out against the twi-night nature of the event, saying "They should never, ever start the race at the time they started this one," an incensed Gordon said.

Kahne, who won his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start on Saturday night, agreed with Gordon. "Last night [Truck race] was pretty neat, racing under the lights for the entire race, but I couldn't see going into the third turn all day until the sun went down, so we need to try something different."

One other factor for Kahne was the fact that when the sun goes down, the race track changes. Of course, with his many trips into the outside wall, it didn't matter all that much.

"The track had changed some [from daylight to darkness], but I ran into the wall so many times tonight that it was tough to know how much the track changed," Kahne said. "Every time you hit the wall here, your car changes. I don't know how much it changed, but we were definitely real loose, even at night."

NASCAR.com

redriderbob

 

Here is the paint scheme he ran this weekend, at the Southern 500 from his favorite cap...



redriderbob

 

Good effort on Kahne's part, but the other guys were passing him like he was standing still towards the end.......[:@]